Facebook Privacy Issues Are Clear in FB Voter Registration App

Washington State will soon become the first state to allow people to register to vote via a Facebook app.

Washington State certainly “likes” this development as the application is being provided free of charge in a joint venture between Microsoft and Facebook.

The applications will work by taking the information that is available on your profile and then autofilling out the currently existing online registration form. The information will then be sold by Facebook to advertisers, uh, I mean it will not be stored in any way as the application is just a web portal to Washington State’s voter registration form.

Critics argue that this will open up vulnerable new ways of committing vote fraud, by allowing anyone with a Facebook profile to register to vote. It has been confirmed, though, that a user’s profile picture will not be a valid substitute for a scanned driver’s license, as is require by current methods of registering online. 

Possible future developments include allowing people to control real tractors via Farmville as well as run a criminal organization via Mafiawars.

It has yet to be confirmed whether twitter will follow suit by allowing people to tweet in voter registration information. 

In unrelated news, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has announced his candidacy for president.